Big Sky Country

Okay, I know technically that title belongs to Montana, but the sky in Minnesota is SO BIG!!  Living in a valley as we do, we never get to see sights like this.

looks like Ireland to me

the contrasts!  (the thunderheads!)

Okay, this one was cool.  Ever since I first saw these on APOD I've wanted to see them.  And we did!  See the rays to the left?

anticrepuscular rays!!

 Of course, the reason the sky is so big is that this is what passes for a "mountain" in Minnesota:

see that little bump in the land -- with a ski slope on it?

Beautiful, beautiful country.  Minnesota is just lovely in spring (before the mosquitoes wake up...).

(yes, these were all taken from a moving car.  don't you love all the reflections of my lap?)

In Which We Play Tourist, and Mrs. Pickles Is Filled With Unaccustomed Humility

The day after Aunt Katie left us (sniff sniff) we had to assuage our grief by doing something fun, so we played tourists in DC.

When you sit in the very front of the metro train car, it looks like you're riding a roller coaster.

We went to the Air & Space Museum, along with everyone else on the eastern seaboard, it seemed. (Well, it was a Saturday in summer.) We looked at amazing photos of planets, walked through a space station prototype, and were amazed by all the dials and switches in an airplane cockpit. We bought some astronaut ice cream and a wind-up airplane for Jojo.

We also watched an IMAX 3-D movie about the Hubble Telescope, which was pretty darn awesome. The girls were way super impressed by the part about how stars are born in nebulae.

I was really looking forward to this movie. We had followed the Space Shuttle Atlantis' mission last year, as they were installing new cameras and gyroscopes and batteries to make the Hubble telescope even awesomer. Every day we would watch the videos posted on Nasa's YouTube page about the day's activities. I heard that the astronauts were also doing some filming with a 3-D camera, and that the old equipment they removed from Hubble would be put in the Smithsonian, so I kept my ears open for news. I was very excited when the IMAX movie came out.

Following the mission was eye-opening in two ways. First, I had never really thought about all the teamwork that went into a shuttle mission. I had always thought of the astronauts as the super stars who got to do all the cool stuff in space. But then I watched the videos of the ground crew as they communicated with the astronauts, trying to solve problems with the installation of some equipment on the telescope. The tension on the ground was intense -- I saw one woman dissolve in tears when the task was finally completed successfully. I then thought of the astronauts as the apex of a pyramid -- sure, they had trained for the more glamorous aspect of the mission, but they couldn't be there without the support of all the people who helped them get there, who trained them, taught them, even suited them up for launch. It was inspiring.

Secondly, the mission was literally eye-opening, not to mention mind-bending. Looking at some of the images taken by Hubble filled me with wonder at the awesomeness and beauty of our universe. I had never fully realized how immense the universe was. Then I read the story of Hubble Deep Field -- do you know it? Astronomers wanted to take the deepest picture of the universe to date, so NASA pointed Hubble at one of the darkest parts of the sky, and then took pictures for 10 days. The returned image revealed galaxies -- GALAXIES -- of stars, where before we had seen nothing. It's mind-blowing. I feel so minuscule in such a huge universe, and yet so loved -- that God should have seen fit to create all these worlds for His sheer pleasure, and then chose our planet to inhabit with us creatures made in His image. It's an honor to be a part of such a vast, beautiful universe. I really feel part of the Great Dance described in C.S. Lewis' Perelandra.

The Face of Perfection

Or maybe I'm just an eensie wee bit biased.


...Mmmm, nah, he IS perfect.

Daniel is six weeks old today. That means he is officially not a newborn any more. He's quickly growing out of the "brand new model" look -- his legs don't look like chicken legs any more as he develops the Thighs of Thunder TM, his skin is becoming more like porcelain every day, he's growing yet another chin, and his chub folds are multiplying rapidly. I can already see the beginnings of knuckle dimples.

And speaking of dimples, he SMILES! (The real money shot is about 1:30 in. -- I just couldn't bear to edit any more out!)




He just loves being held. He can tolerate being alone for maybe 5 minutes tops before he starts on his really cute "Where did everybody go?" fake cry. Even when he gets worked up to the semi-hysterical point, he calms down the second he is picked up. Mr. Pickles and I were commenting last night on how satisfying that is -- to have a baby be so contented in your arms -- knowing that simply your presence makes them feel happy and safe. There was a time when I would feel resentful that I had to hold a needy baby ALL DAY LONG and couldn't get ANYTHING done. But now I consider it a privilege to be able to hold a baby all day long -- knowing that this stage is going to pass allll too quickly, and that the other stuff which is much less important will eventually get done someday (that's what older children are for!). Even now Joseph doesn't want to snuggle much -- he's certainly not a baby any more. *sniff*

But he LOVES being a big brother!

Mama's boys

I'm still wrapping my mind around the fact that I'm a mother of sons -- sonS, plural. Boys are such foreign creatures. But I look forward to learning more about them! :)

And now, for something ENTIRELY different

This post is not going to be about the apocalyptic amounts of snow we've had to put up with this winter. I'm not going to mention how many times we've had to dig ourselves out.

Only to get buried again.

Nor will I mention how awful the roads were for days on end, nor the incompetence of the VDOT snowplow operators (okay, really? plowing 1 1/2 lanes? how is that helpful?).


No, my friends, this post will be about beauty.

Like this way-cool sunrise that definitely made it worth being woken up before 6:30 to see. I couldn't get the colors quite right with my crappy photo editor, but if you tilt your screen to darken it you'll see a sun pillar shooting up into the sky.


This post will also be about joy.

Like the joy of having Science confirm that yes, there really is an alien being taking over your body.


I feel kind of sorry for sonographers. They turn on a screen, squirt hot goo on a total stranger's abdomen, and then have to take measurement after measurement of this uncooperative moving thing on a screen. Meanwhile, the new parents, who really don't give a rip for checklists, have been looking forward to this moment for months, and at the first quiet words of "okay, well, let's see what we've got; okay, here's the head," these unreasonable parent people want to stop time and savor this most amazing, miraculous moment when a window to the inner secrets of love is opened, and they behold their offspring, that bundle of bumps and kicks which they have only been able to feel for the last month or so. They just want to sit and wonder at the marvel of the new life which God has entrusted to their care -- they don't want to be rushed into taking pictures of spinal columns and cranial measurements. They want to pause at such unscientific moments and study useless things like the profile, the hands, the feet, marveling over and over that It's Really a Baby in There, Their Baby. This is a Someone they won't get to see again for many more months, and they act like they have to treasure these all-too-brief glimpses, this shaft of light straight from heaven, before ordinary reality thrusts itself in and demands attention to the mundane minutia that make up our daily lives. But at least these silly parents are allowed to keep some mementos of the glory and beauty of the moment, something to remind them of the grace and the mystery that is dwelling amongst them, something to stick on their refrigerators and make them smile with thankfulness.

A future piano player if ever I saw one.

And dancer.

My belly button is halfway popped out, so I must be halfway done!

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood...

It snowed last night, the heavy wet stuff. This morning I woke up inside an Ansel Adams picture.


Every tree was completely transformed. It was magical, especially driving to Mass for the feast of St. Blaise. I never appreciate how many different beautiful shades of brown there are until everything is changed into a fairy world of black and white.

Sadly, by lunch time the sun had warmed things up so much that all the trees were barren again. But it did leave things nice & wet still, so the girls are currently outside pelting each other with fat, slushy snowballs.